


Bonnie and Clyde Didn't Work Alone

by cm (mumblemutter)



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Assassins, Comment Fic, M/M, Minor Character Deaths, Organized Crime
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-08
Updated: 2012-01-08
Packaged: 2017-10-29 05:11:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/316184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mumblemutter/pseuds/cm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Maybe when you're old enough you'll understand a little better.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bonnie and Clyde Didn't Work Alone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [introductory](https://archiveofourown.org/users/introductory/gifts).



> Written in response to [this picture prompt](http://whateverish.org/stuff/pics/whyareyouwearingthis.jpg) and subsequently validated by [this random find](http://daka-el.tumblr.com/post/10172661859), thank you very much.

"Listen, the first time's always the worst - it gets better."

This while Charles has his head in the toilet bowl, throwing up the partially digested remains of his lunch. And possibly his breakfast.

Erik's actually _concerned_ , hovering at the bathroom door because he's worried that Charles will faint, or worse.

"I'll be fine, love," Charles says, when he can speak again. _Love_ , why did he call him that? Reserved for girls only - despite how he has very little interest in most of them nowadays beyond the platonic -

His ex-schoolmates with their prim knees and their knee-high socks, and oh how nice they smelled and their minds blazed so delightfully -

None quite as bright as Erik's, of course.

It all seems so long ago and so very far away: school, girls, the mundanity of his once perfectly ordinary life.

Jesus, he's losing it. Not just the contents of his stomach.

"You sure," Erik's saying, and now he's bent over Charles, his hand warm and reassuring on Charles' back. "Maybe I was right. Maybe you're just not cut out for this."

Charles lifts his head and says, "Fuck you," quite distinctly.

Erik laughs and flushes the bowl without using his hands.

*

It starts with a dead body. The dead body of Charles' stepfather, to be precise. Charles steps into a puddle of blood and is surprised when he feels tears gathering at the edges of his eyes. He'd always disliked the son of a bitch.

Not enough to want him dead.

But someone else apparently does.

"It's not personal, you understand," the man unscrewing the silencer from his gun says. "I'm just the messenger."

"You're not going to kill me," Charles blinks, surprised. He's already wondering how far exactly he can run before the bullet catches him in the back. Pictures the blood exploding from his chest as he falls. Like a comic book page, starkly colored for maximum effect. Never even occurs to him to push - to say, "Put the gun to your own temple. Shoot." or "Forget you ever saw me." or "Tell me who ordered the hit."

Instead he says, when the man shrugs his shoulders - _they didn't pay me for the children_ \- "Take me with you."

"What?"

"Take me with you." Charles wipes at his face with the sleeve of his shirt. "Take me with you, please."

"Don't be stupid, kid." There's no part of him that didn't radiate disbelief. "You got all this," he waves his gun around to indicate the expanse of the house - the soul destroying mausoleum, Charles will say disdainfully later, when he's feeling particularly maudlin - "Why the fuck would you want my life?"

"Because," Charles says, and he doesn't have an answer. "Because."

*

Erik is halfway to being drunk, wandering around the living room in a leopard skin coat that's probably never seen better days, waving his gun around as if it isn't loaded. The coat doesn't match his diamond studs, a truly hideous pair of accessories if Charles has ever seen one. He'd come back to the house like this, and beyond wanting to ask "I could swear you left here with a shirt" Charles wants to know how he managed to walk down the street unmolested by paint.

Then again, even an animal activist must have some sort of self-preservation: Erik doesn't look like the type that takes to being assaulted without some kind of swift, violent retribution.

"What's wrong," Charles dares to ask, at some point.

"Nothing. Fuck you."

 _Oh, if only,_ Charles wants to say, but now's probably not the time for flippancy: there's an undercurrent of something dark radiating from Erik, an emotion Charles only recognizes but has never personally felt. Grief, and all its stages.

Charles stares at his hands for a while, and finally Erik sits down heavily next to him on the couch.

"My mother died," he says, his voice flat, stripped of emotion.

"Oh. I'm sorry, Erik." Charles hadn't even known Erik had a mom to speak of. The man wasn't the greatest conversationalist, and Charles tries not to pry. But of course he dpes. A mom and a dad and maybe siblings, even. A family. Possibly one he even likes. What a surprise, that.

Where do professional killers come from?

Not Westchester, surely. Surely not.

Charles leans sideways until his head hits Erik's arm, and Erik sighs, slips an arm around his shoulders. "How old are you, again," Erik asks, when Charles tilts his chin up and opens his mouth.

"Fifteen. Same age I was two weeks ago, when you asked me the same question."

"Right." Erik removes his arm, carefully reeling back the need for comfort, for something real to touch and hold on to, just in the hopes that it will alleviate the pain, somehow.

Charles won't lie, he's not really the type to turn down an opportunity just because the other person's in a vulnerable state. But: it's Erik, and Charles, maybe. Wants more than a night that will surely be brushed off the next morning as a moment of weakness, and maybe even the faint accusation of taking advantage, to alleviate the guilt.

This is how it gets played out, Charles has seen it in the minds of others: latching on to a memory when he's bored, on a long bus journey or during an interminably boring class. Justifications and excuses, always. "Maybe when I'm sixteen," he says lightly.

"Maybe," Erik says. "Maybe."

*

"If you're only here because you want to find out who killed your stepfather, I promise you I don't know. Envelope. Picture. I don't ask questions."

"I'm not," Charles says, over and over again, and tries to convey the extent of how much he doesn't care in a glance, and then finally a tentative extension of his mind.

It's not personal, he tells himself, when Erik swiftly, if ineffectually, tries to drive him out. "I'm sorry," he mumbles, over the shouting.

Abruptly, Erik stops. "It's allright," he says. A small smile crosses his face. "I guess I just have to trust you, won't I?"

Charles puts on his best, wide-eyed face that won't work on Erik, but he does it anyway, more out of habit at this point than anything else, and says, "Please do."

*

Charles is an excellent shot, picking targets off at two hundred meters with ease. Erik gets him a .22 Calibre Beretta, "Good first handgun," he says.

"Why this though," Charles asks at one point, but it's a rhetorical question at best.

Sure Erik could use any kind of metal in the vicinity as a weapon, and sure he could make it look like an accident. So could Charles, if he tried hard enough, probably.

Once, he was mad enough at Cain that he reached in and squeezed, and Cain fell to the floor in a dead faint. It scared him, at the time, but mostly over how much he didn't care.

But then: Not everyone wants a murder to look like an accident or a suicide. Sometimes, a message needs to be sent.

Charles carefully doesn't ask what kind of a message needed to be sent when Kurt Marko was shot in the head.

*

If Charles had been expecting a professional assassin to walk about in a thousand dollar suit and live a filled with glamour and martinis shaken, not stirred, well.

All Erik seems to have is shifty friends with even gaudier taste in clothes and the tendency to show outward, and not just inward, disdain towards Charles.

A middle-aged friend of his in an ugly orange jacket looks Charles up and down and says, "So you're the one that's looking for a bit of rough, eh? Erik you fucking fag, they don't pay you to kidnap children. This is why they don't let you cunts in the military."

"Leave the kid alone," Erik says, but he's smiling as he stirs coffee into a mug. It's _instant._

Charles glares balefully at them both before he storms upstairs, but he sleeps on the couch and Erik's bedroom is off limits so he's reduced to slamming the bathroom door and then sitting on the toilet bowl, waiting for Erik's fucking friend to finally leave.

"He's a good sort," Erik says, when Charles creeps down, hours afterwards. "When you get to know him better."

"So I'm to be less sensitive then."

"If you want to survive, yeah."

It sounds simple enough, so Charles schools the scowl on his face into an expression of neutrality and sits at the table as Erik pushes a bowl of ready made pasta towards him.

Erik isn't _sorry_ , this Charles can tell, but he's not enjoying Charles being upset.

It's good enough, he supposes.

*

"Maybe a nice buzzcut," Charles suggests helpfully, while Erik is applying hairgel in the mirror and sighing fitfully.

"What, I like my hair."

"Yes, it's perfectly fine." He lets the words hang there, silent and judgmental, but Erik isn't one of his schoolmates and he's certainly not Cain. Charles steps back warily as the air turns thick with a faint menace.

Finally though, Erik just lets a grin cross his face. An electric shaver comes flying out at Charles; he barely manages to catch it with clumsy fingers.

"You want to fix me up. Go on then." He drags a chair over and sits, crosses his legs. "Any time soon, Xavier."

Charles starts. Erik never calls him by his last name.

He walks over on wobbly knees, but somehow manages to keep his hand steady as he turns the shaver on and applies it to Erik's thin locks. They're surprisingly silky, surprisingly, "Curls," he mutters under his breath. Hard to tell, under all that product.

Erik runs his hand self-consciously over his newly shorn head afterwards, says, "If you like it."

"I like it very much," Charles replies. He turns and flees into the kitchen before his face can turn any redder.

*

They fuck before he turns sixteen, before Erik even allows him to handle a gun. On the sliding scale of moral ambiguity, Charles doesn't think this rates very highly against murder, even murder for hire, and evidently even Erik finally sees the futility of waiting for an arbitrary to everyone but the legal system number.

Erik allows Charles to ride his lap, slide their cocks together, until he's tired of it, then flips him over and fucks him until he's screaming, begging for it -

begging for it _Oh, Erik. Please, please. Oh_ -

Fuck.

Erik lights a cigarette, predictably enough, afterwards, and brushes a gentle hand across Charles' damp forehead. "Tomorrow," he says. "We start training."

It's not exactly the declaration of undying love that Charles is halfway to expecting, but at least it saves him from his own blubbering and earnest response.

*

The blood splatters on his face, but he doesn't feel it.

Instead he feels her die. Neurons snap and the heart stops pumping blood through hot veins and a woman screams in her own head, over and over and over again, without stopping, as every part of her dies.

And then: blessed nothingness.

"We gotta go," Erik says. Charles just stares at the body and doesn't move. "Snap out of it." He slaps Charles in the face, hard enough that Charles starts to cry. _DNA DNA_ , his mind screams, but it's only soaking his sweater. "Move," Erik says, and it's his mind that Charles clings to more than anything else, shimmering and startlingly bright against all this death.

In the car, he breathes into a paper bag that Erik hands to him and concentrates on not throwing up until they're home at least.

Some dignity for the recently turned criminal.

Such as it is, at least.

*

The question comes down to not who wanted Kurt Marko dead, it's who didn't.

They make the news for a while. Charles flips through the newspapers and scours the Internet: Dead nuclear scientist and his missing step-son. The words _old money_ and _controversial research into the field of genetic mutation_ come up a lot.

"He hurt you," Erik asks mildly once, stirring a pot of milk on the stove.

They're laying low in a safe house somewhere. Charles isn't allowed to leave the apartment. Logically he understands it, but in the back of his head he still imagines that it should be more exciting than this: danger and intrigue and a long-range rifle from miles away aimed at a heavily protected target.

At least Erik's jeans ride dangerously low, and the man seems averse to shirts.

"Well?"

"Define hurt," Charles says dismissively. "If you're asking if he abused me, then no. He was never around often enough to do that."

"So you're just another bored, neglected rich kid then. Running away from your lonely, spoilt life."

"You didn't have to take me with you," Charles snaps, and again with the tears. He bites his lips and wills them away, hopes Erik doesn't notice. Not a good start to his future career, if he can't even keep from crying. DNA lingers even in your tears. Charles swipes at his cheek with his thumb and examines the wet result. Just salt and water and everything he is, in one drying drop.

Erik walks towards him, leaving the pot to stir itself. He takes Charles' chin in his hand and forces it up. "You saw my face," he says. "I would have had to kill you. I know what I said, but a bullet doesn't cost anything."

"You're lonely."

"It's a lonely life. You should go home."

But Charles stays, and eventually Erik stops asking him to leave.

*

"Does it get better," Charles says. He's showered and in a bathrobe, curled up in Erik's lap like there's no-where else he'd rather be.

There is no-where else he would rather be.

"You could start by not linking your minds together first, that would probably help." His hand hasn't left the curve of Charles' hip.

Charles takes it and slides it inside the robe, rests it in the exact same spot. "I was just trying to keep her still. Keep her from screaming."

"Not the wisest choice, probably."

"Clearly not." His eyes start to close, and he nestles himself deeper into Erik's arms. "Something to learn for next time."

"The next time," Erik says, and kisses Charles' temple.

Charles falls asleep like that, and he doesn't dream of dying.


End file.
